Back from New York, unpacking in my West Hollywood home, just shy of 1 am. But a word before before collapsing. It would obviously be derelict of news orgs not to have reported that last weekend Jurassic World managed the highest opening-weekend tally in box-office history — $524.1 million, of which $208.8 million was spent in North America alone. This financial windfall for Universal Pictures and Thomas Tull‘s Legendary Pictures was reported by most news orgs as the emotional equivalent of the surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945. They also failed to mention a very, very minor detail in the story, which is that Jurassic World might be the dumbest blockbuster ever made in the history of motion pictures. Any fair-minded assessment of what happened last weekend would have to acknowledge that the audiences who made Jurassic World the all-time box-office champ (for now) are to a great extent responsible for the tone of stupidity in big-studio escapist flicks. 98% of the reports didn’t even toss this out in passing, not even anecdotally. They were too busy jumping for joy with their white cheerleader sweaters on, going “wheeeee!’ and hugging each other and calling their parents, etc.

HE commenter Jacob Dorsy reminded early this morning that I’m talking about news organizations who never editorialize…”‘oh by the way the movie is incredibly stupid’ isn’t really part of what they do. They are reporting the news that the previous box-office record has been broken, not reviewing the film.”

HE response [also in the comment thread]: “Everybody does everything these days, junior fucko. Nobody just reads the news if they feel like adding a little comment. Are you telling me that if Jurassic World contained material that was commonly assessed as grossly offensive in some kind of politically incorrect way…are you telling me that straight news orgs wouldn’t report its financial success in that context? But when its success is linked to forehead-slapping stupidity and corporate poison serum in both the plot/dialogue and the mindset of the 2015 audience, nobody says squat. They just grin and report the numbers and go ‘wow…what a great success! Everybody in the media needs to drop to their knees and show obeisance before the financial brilliance of Universal Pictures and Thomas Tull.’ Because America does ‘stupid’ in so many different ways on a daily basis that news people have stopped noticing the behavior and certainly stopped reporting it. Because that stupidity feeds the beast and keeps the financial turbines humming. Commercially, culturally, politically.”